What do EU nationals think of the vaccines mess?

[Frazzled2207]

I’m a committed remainer. But the EU really did mess up last night. More seriously they are not in a good position right now with regards vaccine supply. Lots of anti-Eu posts here right now from committed remainers like me.

Just wondering what EU citizens make of all this and is there any bad feeling towards the UK? Do you think the EU has a right to some of the UK’s vaccine supply? Are people angry at the fact that the UK was able to secure more vaccines more quickly? Or are we coming across as selfish idiots?
Generally curious and am not here to start an argument

Yes they should consider it, no problem with that but how long is it going to take to approve, order and deliver? In the meantime the EU are short of vaccines, they have discredited the AZ vaccine, no one will want to take it, that leaves a huge gap in vaccine supply.

@Baileysforchristmas: I'm in an EU country. I have seen no evidence of AZ being discreditted here so I see no evidence for 'no one will want to take it'. It's also been made clear that you don't get to choose which vaccine you take. You seem to be catastrophising this vaccine situation for EU quite dramatically?
The plan here has been delayed a week at the moment (updated end of January) so I don't see this huge gap in vaccine supply appearing so far. Pfizer, for example, had lower supply in Q1 but should have increased supply in Q2.

they have discredited the AZ vaccine, no one will want to take it

Yeah, this is not true in my country either.

[quote 3asAbird]Would EU countries really welcome or approve Russian vaccine or is this just Eastern block?
1500 decisions made within short period of times.
Accepts some failings but still pot shots thrown at uk being too quick Israel compromised privacy of people's health data.
I'm baffled if she's a doctor of epidemiology that she didn't fully understand the difficulty and time frames of producing vaccines.

www.theguardian.com/society/2021/feb/05/ursula-von-der-leyen-uk-covid-vaccine-speedboat-eu-tanker[/quote]
I read in a Finnish paper that they reckon the russian vaccine is better but its unlikely that we will get it, something about using a slightly different formula for the booster so that it works better. Although I'm basing that on my translation skills, which are not superb.

AZ has definitely not been discredited here, its going to be rolled out to healthcare workers who haven't yet been vaccinated and CEV.

I was talking about Macron’s comment

“The real problem on AstraZeneca is that it doesn’t work the way we were expecting it to,” Macron told a group of reporters, including POLITICO, in Paris.

[quote Barababam]@3asAbird: In a recent article a Danish specialist within this field when asked which vaccine he would prefer (they asked a number of different experts) specifically said his preference would be the Russian vaccine, though that is unlikely as not approved in Europe. So there is faith amongst people who know about these things in the Russian vaccine it seems (I haven't looked into it so far as hasn't been relevant). I cannot find the article unfortunately now. If the EMA approve it then yes why should people not consider the Russian one? Do you know anything bad about it, besides being produced in Russia?[/quote]
Why is there so much faith in the Russian vaccine? What’s the reason behind the perception that this is the bees knees?

The more the merrier imo

@TableFlowerss over 90% efficacy, as reported in The Lancet 3 days ago.

www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(21)00191-4/fulltext

[quote Motorina]@TableFlowerss over 90% efficacy, as reported in The Lancet 3 days ago.

www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(21)00191-4/fulltext[/quote]
Ahh well that’s good news then. The more vaccines the better for everyone

[quote QuentinInQuarantino]@DdraigGoch

I’m sorry but I don’t really understand (although I’m no statistician)

This is the info for excess mortality I have found showing Germany, England, Spain and Norway. Spain had a worse earlier peak in terms of numbers of cases than England and a slightly better third wave, and the excess mortality seems to match the COVID patterns? Why do you say there are undoubtedly more deaths than they’re admitting to?[/quote]
The pattern will roughly match, it's the magnitude which may differ. I found the raw death counts (for all causes) for the last few years. Over the whole of 2020, Spain had something like 13% more excess deaths than the UK did. I didn't keep the spreadsheet I used so cannot remember the exact figure.

There are far more excess deaths unaccounted for in the Spanish data than there were in the UK. Obviously there will always be some because not everyone would have been tested. Conversely some people died of CV who would have died in the same year from something else so will be recorded as a covid death but wouldn't have been an excess death. Case and death reporting standards have differed by country so we will never have a consistent view of how different nations have performed.

@Baileysforchristmas I thought that’s what you were referring to but it’s stretching things to go from one eu country’s leaders comment (which were not even reported here) to no one wanting to take it. It makes me think you either have health anxiety (if that’s the case please do get help) or you enjoy thinking of the EU vaccinations failing. I’m not sure which (don’t need to tell me!).

As for Russian vaccine my understanding is that it is similar to AZ but they use different virus bases (I think) for the first and second shot which means that your body doesn’t react immediately to second shot so you get more effective immune response.

@Barababam it wasn’t just one EU country though was it, a lot of EU countries won’t use it on over 65’s and then there was the EU commissioners comments at how we had rushed through approval which was risky.

@Baileysforchristmas yes EU countries want the full evidence before they make decisions. From where I stand that is the responsible thing to do (Denmark is doing the same with only using it on under 65 for now). So their actions (from my perspective) inspire confidence once they go for it rather than the opposite! There are enough people under 65 who are in line to get vaccinated now according to the plan so it’s really not a big deal.

@DdraigGoch yes it’s such a shame you deleted it, I can’t find it anywhere after a 10 minute google (not willing to put more effort in!) I can’t even find any data for all of 2920 - gov. hi only shows the data up until June. Spain’s first peak was really bad, the uks third peak was really bad, and so you would indeed need to compare the whole of 2020 to get a fair idea.

If you do find your data I’d be interested to know because I actually work (not closely - totally different field) with the brother of Fernando Simon (who is the Spanish equivalent to Chris Whitty) and being British myself, this sort of topics come up whenever we end up in the same lift!

@Barababam it doesn’t inspire confidence in the vaccine though does it. Then there is a 10 week shortage as one German politician said. You have about 50 million vaccines coming in between now and the beginning of April between 440 million people, which works out to just under 2 million people for each 27 countries, the UK would’ve nearly have vaccinated everyone over 50 by then. We have just ordered another 50 million which will work on the next variants that are coming up.

www.theguardian.com/world/2021/feb/05/uk-orders-50m-doses-covid-vaccines-fight-variants-german-curevac

I assume then that some EU countries putting restrictions on the Astra Zeneca reflects that they don't trust the judgment of the European Medicines Agency.

It will be interesting if the EMA gets all the data from the Russians to assess Sputnik?

I suppose one fortuitous side-effect of some countries approving the use of Ox/Az on 65+ and some not is that we're about to get enthusiastic statisticians producing lovely graphs showing the differences in cases, admissions and deaths between the two. The populations are demographically similar and disease trajectories have tracked pretty closely up til now, albeit with a week or two lag one way or another. The data and statistics thread will be in raptures burrowing down into the details.

And what’s the point of the EMA if countries don’t seem to follow their advice? It was supposed to inspire confidence in vaccines if it had been signed off by them, that doesn’t seem to be happening.

@Baileysforchristmas I guess if it doesn’t inspire confidence in you we clearly feel confident from different things as I cannot really see your way of thinking playing out here 🤷‍♀️. And you are aware right that the vaccines are divided based on population? In a way I’m glad this thread is soon filling up as there’s clearly an agenda here and not really an interest is knowing the EU citizen point of view (there’s at least three people saying the age decision has not affected confidence so I don’t understand why you keep on insisting it has/will).

The U.K. may well have vaccinated everyone over 50 by April, but only once. Two doses are required, so if the 3 week gap is kept, then it might be that for example a 60 yo Dane may be fully vaccinated before their U.K. equivalent. Who knows. We’ll have to wait and see. The different trends and data will be fascinating. I have family I’d like to visit in U.K. and Eu and so, for me as much as anyone, i hope we all get there ASAP. All I know that the vaccine is bigger news in the U.K. than here, probably because it’s a relative success in the U.K. and therefore want to make it big news. Quite understandable. FWIW I think the U.K. gov has made the correct decisions for the U.K. population regarding vaccine rollout but the same decisions would not be right here.

@Barababam we’ll have to agree to disagree, maybe not in some EU countries but some it will, especially France. You will still be short of vaccines for 10 weeks, it will take a while to sign off Russia vaccine, hopefully the EU will get it’s finger out before Autumn this year, the UK is on track to vaccinate everyone over 50 by the beginning of May, all adult population by August.

Oh and it is on track vaccinate everyone twice by August

The Eu countries who have stopped the vaccination programme so more tests can be performed to check that the vaccine is safe.
Have they found any not to be safe or come up with a medical/scientific reason they couldn’t have been used in the first place.

I don’t understand the reason for a delay if everything was already tested by the EMA. What else was there going to be or do they not trust the EMA

@Baileysforchristmas Denmark’s vaccination plan (updated end of January) is aiming to have all adults above 16/18 vaccinated by July. So if UKs plan is only to be done by August Id wonder what is wrong. People here are already getting second dose. And if you mean France just say France not EU 🤷‍♀️